Campaign to stop the deportation of Roseline Akhalu

Category Archives: Theresa May

Roseline Akhalu

Roseline Akhalu, the kidney transplant patient who faced the threat of removal to Nigeria where she would have died within a matter of weeks, has heard today that the Home Office has given her leave to remain until at least February 2016. Public Interest Lawyers who have represented Rose since she was first detained by the UK Border Agency in March 2012 confirmed that there has been no appeal lodged by the Home Office against an Immigration Appeal Tribunal’s ruling that Ms Akhalu could lawfully remain in the United Kingdom. They will be pressing the Home Office to grant their client indefinite leave to remain in light of the exhaustion of the Secretary of State’s appeal rights in this case.

On receiving news that she had won the right to stay in Leeds and continue with her life-saving treatment Rose told the support campaign:

“I would like to thank all my supporters who have helped me so much.”

“I am free at last!”

Rose is now hoping to find a job that will put her years of community volunteering to good use.

In a case described by her barrister, Ronan Toal, as likely to determine whether his client will be able to live a relatively healthy and long life or whether she will face an extremely distressing and undignified death within weeks, Roseline Akhalu last week won the latest – and her supporters hope the last – stage of her fight to remain in UK.

The Home Office had long accepted that Akhalu, a kidney-transplant patient who came to the UK on a prestigious Ford Foundation scholarship in 2004, faced “inevitable and rapid” death if returned to Nigeria where she could not afford preventative and palliative care, but nevertheless continued to pursue her removal from the UK.

The Upper Tribunal last week found that a First-Tier judge who allowed Akhalu’s appeal late last year, on the grounds that the Home Office action amounted to a disproportionate interference with her right to respect for her private life, “did not make an error of law” and that “the circumstances here were, if not truly unique, so exceptional as to stand out from the ordinary run of cases”. The Secretary of State’s appeal was therefore dismissed.

Akhalu’s case has sparked a grassroots campaign involving community, church and solidarity groups across the UK. In extraordinary scenes on 18 July, more than 30 of Akhalu’s supporters travelled down from Yorkshire to pack the Upper Tribunal, a non-descript office building in central London usually known only to lawyers and their clients.

Her legal team successfully argued that removal to Nigeria would be a disproportionate interference with her Article 8 right to respect for her private life. The tribunal also recognised the “extensive and productive” contribution the 49-year-old has made to her community while in the UK. If now granted leave to remain and the right to work, she plans to start an NGO and continue her activities with church groups and asylum support projects.

“The Home Office, and even the press, might say this is another ‘Article 8’ human rights case,” said Ronan Toal, “but as Sedley LJ observed in the Court of Appeal case of JA (Ivory Coast), there is a “a moral duty to help others in need” that serves as a legitimate consideration when evaluating state action of this kind. Whether we cast it in terms of ‘disproportionate interference with a human right’ weighed against the ‘economic well-being of the UK’, or by simply reaching for what is intuitively and obviously humane, condemning Rosaline to certain death would have been grotesque and nihilistic.”

Her case also provides a powerful example of the potentially disastrous consequences that could result from restricting access to judicial review. Her present legal team was instructed after she was detained in order to be removed to Nigeria and after her claim for judicial review of the Home Office refusal to accept a fresh human rights claim had been rejected on the papers. She was nevertheless able to obtain an injunction to stop her removal and to secure the right of appeal that she has now won only because she was able to renew her application for judicial review orally. Had the government’s proposal to restrict the right to renew judicial review proceedings been implemented, then she would have been removed to Nigeria about a year ago and would have been dead within weeks.

Roseline Akhalu was represented at her appeal and in her claim for judicial review by Ronan Toal, who was instructed by Tessa Gregory of Public Interest Lawyers.

On Friday 26 July, judges in the Upper Immigration and Asylum Tribunal rejected an appeal from the Home Secretary, Theresa May, that Roseline Akhalu, a 49-year old former postgraduate student from Leeds should be returned to Nigeria where she would have faced the prospect of death ‘within weeks’ [judgment PDF].

On hearing news of the judgment Roseline Akhalu told her friends and supporters:

“Thank you everybody for the support, for the prayers, for the publicity, for everything. Hopefully the UKBA will let matters rest at this stage.”

Home Secretary, Theresa May, has been repeatedly defeated in attempts to send Rose Akhalu to a certain and painful death (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Roseline Akhalu is hoping to live a normal life among her friends and fellow parishioners after news of the judgment.

Judge Southern on behalf of the Upper Tribunal in rejecting the Home Office’s appeal said:

“we are satisfied that the [original] judge did not make an error of law…the circumstances here were, if not truly unique, so exceptional as to stand out from the ordinary run of cases where a claimant complains of being disadvantaged by a comparative lack of medical care in his or her own country. That was not the basis of the decision here”.

“We are delighted that the Upper Tribunal has dismissed the Home Secretary’s appeal and found in Rose’s favour. The facts of Rose’s case are exceptional and have been rightly recognized as such. It must now be time for the Home Secretary to accept that it would be unlawful to deport Rose to a certain and lonely death in Nigeria. No more money should be wasted on further appeals and Rose should be allowed to get on with her life within the community that has given her such incredible support throughout this ordeal.”

Esme Madill on behalf of the Save Rose Campaign declared:

“We are overjoyed with today’s judgment. Roseline has had to endure months of needless worry and anxiety because of this groundless and expensive appeal by the Home Secretary, which has aggravated Rose’s fragile health condition. We really hope that the Home Office now has the sense to admit defeat so that Rose can get on with her life and continue contributing to her community as she has been doing for so many years.”